Tiny Town, Iceland

One of the things I'm coming to love about Iceland is how most of it is these tiny, tiny, tiny towns tucked away in a fjord only accessible by a twisty dirt road and at least an hour away from the next proper town... and yet they each seem to have just enough of everything you need.

Each one has its gas station, a small grocery store, at least one restaurant/café where folks hang out, and of course the all-important community center for cultural events, which can be a big, fancy complex in a big town, or in a small town it might be a simple hall that also doubles as the village school.

And with these just-enough resources in hand, Icelanders nonchalantly set about putting together concerts, festivals, exhibitions and all manner of creative things. Because if there's one thing an Icelander seems to be constitutionally incapable of, it's being not creative.

As an example, here's "downtown" on Grímsey island: The sole restaurant (surprisingly good), a tiny supermarket and an even tinier gas station that's basically just a shed with a pump out front. An Icelandic town pared down to the essentials:

Other things I love: Cozy cafés run on a standard model of serve-your-own soup-and-bread plus serve-your-own coffee-or-tea. A very relaxed set-up, and most places are stunningly chill about a traveler coming and lingering over a cup of coffee to use the wi-fi for a while.

Here's my absolute favorite café so far, a place called Gísli Eiríkur Helgi (named after three brothers from an old legend) in the town of Dalvík in northern Iceland. I also watched a couple World Cup games here, in a back room with an amusing mixed crowd of Icelanders and Germans:

(They made me a vegetarian option! Those folks are awesome.)

And of course I love the nature, the nature, the nature. Fjords and mountains, lava fields and hot springs and steam rising out of the ground. I'll try to put some more pictures together soon.

But meanwhile, speaking of paring life down to the essentials...

As for me? Give me a cup of coffee (one of those twin fuels of Iceland! gas for the cars and coffee for the people, both going non-stop at all hours) and a place to plug in the computer (because, yes, I'm doing this weird combined kind of travel where I'm partly hiking in the mountains, but partly sitting in cafés writing and stuff) and, hey, how about a view of the fjord to one side and a band warming up for tonight's concert on the other?

In other words, greetings from Borgarfjörður eystri, in the East Fjords, in the days just before this town of 100 or so residents welcomes thousands of guests for a music festival.